the pain in my left flank, the one that my fall the other day racked me with, it's still there, throbbing like a persistent, taunting tick of a mangy dog. i've since chucked those sanity altering narcotics in favor of the less innocuous non-steroidal anti-inflammatory analgesics. and maybe, that's why. but the persistence of the pain, albeit less stinging, still gives my, what is getting to be more apparent, one track mind something to obsess, like an itch unscratched. who was it anyway-was it mother? or my fourth grade science teacher?-who said that what is an itch but a slight pain. but that's neither here nor there. the once obscure japanese fictionist kenji miyazama wrote "we must embrace our pains and burn it as fuel for our journey." in that case, my life should be on warp speed now. lately, i've been trading, furiously, it seems, at times, on the currencies of all my past pains that i have insisted on not forgetting. i know, it's hardly life-furthering. regressive, in fact, as most life coaches describe it, but i resolutely recall all of them as vividly as that little house i grew up in, that crouching bungalow under an adolescent kamachile tree, that house which was painted yellow on its front wall one summer afternoon, its insubstantial windows, curtained with flimsy, floral printed, unhemmed swatches of imitation chiffon that my first ever dog, happy, would yelp after as they fluttered wayward to the streets every time the slightest of island breezes blew.
